Sunday 9th December - Trip to see the Magellanic Penguins and Dolphins.
We were up early again today for our trip, really excited about seeing dolphins and walking among the penguins. As our bus pulled up outside the hostel my heart sank a little as we both recognised the bus and the driver - oh yes Juan-Carlos, aka - mad man!
Oh well, brace yourself for a bumpy fast ride and make the most of it!
We set of at supersonic speed to our first stop, the dolphin watching. The dirt roads are really bumpy, but it was not as long a journey to start with, about 40mins. When we got to the port they got us all dressed up in waterproofs, so we were expecting to get very wet, alas, when we finally got to sit in the small boat they told us that the port had been closed due to the wind and that was the end of our dolphin watching experience - gutted!
To top it all Juan-Carlos couldn´t start the bus, so we thought that might be the end of the trip altogether, but he got it going in the end and we all cheered!
On now to the penguin colony, at least the wind wouldn´t stop us from seeing them. It took quite a while to get there and a lot more dirt tracks, but it was worth the uncomfortable ride.
As we were making our way to the main colony we were lucky enough to see a number of Guanicos running across the beach. These Lama type animals live side by side with the penguins, quite an odd combination.
There are over a million penguins that now come to this colony every year to have their chicks. It really is an amazing site, you can walk among their nests, but of course being respectful that this is their home and their families. The penguins find a partner once they have reached maturity and then they keep that partner for life. So each year they return to the same nest to mate and have their chicks. Each female has 2 chicks, but the parents take it in turns to keep the egg warm and raise the chicks once they are hatched. Each adult goes off to feed for up to 10 days at a time whilst the other one feeds and nurses the babies. Then on once the partner has returned the other will go off to feed and so on, until the chicks are 42 weeks, then they are on their own! Unfortunately the second chick often doesn´t survive, because the first chick is much bigger and stronger as it is a few weeks older and it easts all the food and the younger one dies.
So in the pictures you can see a number of adult penguins nursing their young, protecting them from the seagulls that constantly fly overhead waiting for the opportunity to get an unprotected egg or young chick. I know it is nature, but it is so cruel to think of it happening.
On one of the photos you can see the mum lying on top of the Chick, this is the way that they sleep to ensure that the seagulls cant get their chicks whilst they sleep.
I said before that the penguins always meet up with the same partners, so basically a partner for life. However, there is an exception to this rule, this is when a male decides to challenge another male for a better nest. There are nest ranging from about 2km away from the beach - these are considered the poorer nests as they are so far away from sea for feeding. So occasionally a male will decide that he feels brave and wants to challenge for a better nest - survival of the fittest! We saw this happening, which was a bit noisy and bloody and again not all too nice to see in real life, but the photo of the 3 penguins you can see is the start of the argument - we hadn´t realised it was going to get quite so nasty! Not sure which one won!
A few more facts about Patagonia - There are 48 million people in Argentina, 11 million of which are in Buenos Aires. The others are scattered over a huge expanse of land and regions. The region we are visiting right now is Patagonia. Here in Patagonia there are only 350,000 inhabitants in total. The towns are small and very spread apart, with a lot of dirt tracks for roads. The first immigrants to arrive in Patagonia were the Welsh - I know they get bloody everywhere don´t they? They landed here and asked permission from the Argentine president to settle here. A lot of the towns have Welsh sounding names, like Rawson where we tried to do the Dolphin watching and Trelew, a nearby town. We went to a Welsh town at the end of of trip, called Gaiman. It didn't look too Welsh to me, however, the houses were more European looking than Argentine houses and there were a lot of Welsh flags around - oh and it rained whilst we were there and there was nothing to do, so actually it was just like Wales - only kidding Mum!
I took a photo outside the traditional Welsh tea room - there was no way we were going in, $30 each for Welsh tea!!!! We went down the road to a cafe and had a cup of coffee and lots of cakes and an empenada for $10, in total.
We also sat in the park to eat our sandwiches and were joined by a lovely dog, we thought he wanted to eat, but he actually wanted to play. He brought Epi a stone to throw for him and carried on doing it until he had had enough - I miss Abbie and Sasha!
The journey home was long and bumpy, but the girls on the bus were nice and we had a chat with them and listened to the ipods - thank God for ipods! I mentioned that the bus didn't start very easily earlier in the day, well it got worse and eventually packed up altogether just as we got back to Puerto Madryn, fortunately there was another bus passing by in the opposite direction, so he came and took us all back to our hostels!!
Spent the night at the hostel, getting packed for Ushuaia.
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